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“The dilemma of making paintings after its 'death' and 'return' is to choose which legacy to embrace. Calvert’s paintings are palimpsests, archeological digs, engagements with art history, improvisational riffs, and fractured views. They wrestle with painting’s dual legacy without settling on an answer."


- John Yau, Hyperallergic

Tiffany Calvert - Artists - FERRARA SHOWMAN GALLERY

Artist Statement

My practice connects painting’s history to our current visual culture, which is shaped by algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI), and blurred boundaries between real and virtual. I use image generating machine learning models (StyleGAN) trained on a dataset of Dutch and Flemish still life paintings to create new invented images, which I print at large scale. Using stencils to protect parts of the printed images, I paint onto them. These masks create hard edges where paint meets reproduction.
 
The machine learning models generate forms reminiscent of still life, but distorted and unexpected. It was, in fact, a viral mutation which created many of the tulips depicted - a virus which today growers must use AI to eradicate. Like AI itself the images are seductive, but the initial beauty of the paintings is a ruse. Reproduction and painterly abstraction are indistinguishable in some places; the paintings unfold to reveal their mutations.
 
These blurred boundaries describe both the production and the product of my work–even my own gendered position is unstable, since my paintings contrast flower subjects, historically suitable material for women artists, and interventions into the fields of gestural abstraction and digital media, which are both historically coded masculine.
 
Tulips depicted in paintings, like digital imagery (NFTs) have been subject to use as currency, and particularly ripe for economic manipulation. By recalling flower paintings, I elicit their role as emblems of value speculation, futures trading, and Dutch colonialist trade and power. In turn, my work explores the way that painterly “transgression” and invention are often complicit in the expansion of speculative capitalism. Like the invisible hand of the market, AI in our lives is largely invisible. By collaborating with AI, I investigate how these neural networks shape our decisions by predicting and replicating needs and desires.

Tiffany Calvert - Artists - FERRARA SHOWMAN GALLERY

Biography

BORN 1976 HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE ::: LIVES & WORKS - SAINT LOUIS, MISSOURI

TIFFANY CALVERT received her MFA in 2005 from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers and her BA in 1998 from Oberlin College. She first exhibited at Ferrara Showman Gallery in the 2020 group exhibition Art in Doom, curated by Matthew Weldon Showman. Calvert’s work has also been exhibited at the Lawrimore Project (Seattle, WA), E.TAY Gallery (NY), the Speed Museum (Louisville, KY), KMAC Museum (Louisville, KY), the Susquehanna Art Museum (PA), and Cadogan Contemporary (London, UK), among others. Residencies include the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, I-Park, and ArtOmi International Arts Center where she received a Geraldine R. Dodge Fellowship. Calvert has received grants from the Great Meadows Foundation and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. She is Associate Professor & Chair, MFA in Visual Art at the Sam Fox School of Design + Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.

As an artist, Tiffany Calvert applies contemporary painting techniques to historical imagery. Her recent work uses the seventeenth-century Dutch floral still life as a springboard for exploring the shifting nature of human perception. Calvert’s paintings incorporate diverse technologies, including fresco, 3D modeling, and data manipulation. The exhibition includes eight new paintings from her latest series which uses image generating machine learning models (StyleGAN) trained on images of 1,007 historical still life paintings to create the image printed on canvas. A digitally-designed large format vinyl stencil is then applied to the surface before being painted on with oils. When the stencil is peeled off it creates hard edges, and preserves areas of the print. John Yau, in his Hyperallergic profile, compares their “improvisational riffs and fractured views” to de Kooning.

Tiffany Calvert - Artists - FERRARA SHOWMAN GALLERY

Curriculum Vitae

*FULL CV AVAILABLE ON REQUEST 

EDUCATION

MFA           Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, Fine Art, 2005

BA              Oberlin College, with Honors  in Art, Liberal Arts with Fine Arts major and Women’s Studies minor, 1998

 

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2024           The Tulips are Too Excitable, KMAC Museum, Louisville KY

2023           Adversarial Nature, Tinney Contemporary, Nashville

2022           Image Value, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, New Orleans

                  Encounter/Exchange: Tiffany Calvert + Naomi Reis, Praise Shadows Gallery, Boston [two person exhibition]

2020           S/ample Data, Tinney Contemporary, Nashville

2019           SH/FT: Tiffany Calvert + Alex Kanevsky, Susquehanna Art Museum, Harrisburg PA [two person exhibition]

2018           Semper Augustus, Moremen Gallery, Louisville KY

2017           Tiffany Calvert: Rainbow Chaos, Arkansas State University, Jonesboro AR

2016           every thing every where, Brick + Mortar Gallery, Easton PA

                  Tenure exhibition, Raritan Valley Community College, Branchburg NJ

2015           Tiffany Calvert, Carl & Sloan Contemporary, Portland OR

2008           Tiffany Calvert: New Work, Lisa Boyle Gallery, Chicago IL

2006           New Paintings by Tiffany Calvert, Lisa Boyle Gallery, Chicago IL

2004           Tiffany Calvert: New Work, Lisa Boyle Gallery, Chicago IL

 

RECENT, SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2023           Living Arrangements, Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, New York City

                  Our Week, with Tiger Strikes Asteroid Collective and Process ITW, Seoul, Korea

                  San Francisco Art Fair, with Ferrara Showman Gallery, New Orleans

2022           Volcano Lovers, Haunt Gallery, Berlin, Germany

                  Satellite Art Fair, with Tiger Strikes Asteroid curatorial collective, Miami

                  One of Many, Harper Gallery, Greenville SC

                  The Art of Europe, Speed Museum, Louisville KY

2021           Still, Life! Mourning, Meaning, Mending, 21C Louisville, KY

                  New Year, New Art, Ferrara Showman Gallery, New Orleans

                  Past Performance as Indicator of Future Outcomes: an exhibition of work by women who use Artificial Intelligence in their art making process, Carnegie Center for Art & History, New Albany IN (exhibition cancelled during COVID)

2020           Art in Doom, Ferrara Showman Gallery, New Orleans

                  The Shands Collection: New Directions, Quappi Gallery, Louisville KY

2018           Spring, Cadogan Contemporary, London UK

                  Something Pretty: works by Tiffany Calvert, Angela Dufresne, Justin Favela,
Stephen Rolfe Powell and HuiMeng Wang, Morlan Gallery, Transylvania University, Lexington KY

                  Long term loan to the Speed Museum, Louisville KY

2017           The Prolonged Gaze: Tiffany Calvert, Vian Sora, and Nhat Tran, guest curated by Mirada Lash, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Speed Museum, Zephyr Gallery, Louisville KY

                  Synthesizing Nature, The Center for Contemporary Art, Bedminster NJ

                  New Recruits, Cressman Center for Visual Arts, University of Louisville

2016           Verblist, curated by Mark Joshua Epstein, E.TAY Gallery, New York City

                  Synthesizing Nature, View Art Center, Old Forge NY

2015           The Memory Palace, Cedar Crest College, Allentown PA

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

2024           Aria Baci, “Does AI Have a Place in Art?”, LEO Weekly, Mar. 10-16

2022           Joy Garnett ,“Tiffany Calvert’s Uncanny Valley” (Interview). Evergreen Review [online]

                  Amy Wilson, “Featured Artist: Tiffany Calvert – A Conversation” (Interview). Majuscule, Issue 8, April 2022 [online]

                  Joe Craig, “Tiffany Calvert: Image Value”, Number: Inc. Magazine, Dec. 2022 [online]

2021           Justin Nolin Key “Tiffany Calvert – This is not a Simulation” (Interview), Artist Proof Podcast, Nov. 19 [online]

2020           John Yau, “Painting’s Divided Legacy”. Hyperallergic, 7 March. [online]

                  Rochelle Belsito, “Shift: A new exhibition featuring the artwork of Tiffany Calvert and Alex Kanevsky explores the passage of time”, American Art Collector, Feb.

2018           Jo Anne Triplett, “Staff Picks: Tiffany Calvert Semper Augustus”, LEO Weekly, Nov. 30

                  Mary Clore, “Semper Augustus”, Ruckus Critical Art Review, Nov. 11

2017           Cara Sullivan, “Perception in the Digital Age: The Hybrid Paintings of Tiffany Calvert”. Number Magazine, Issue 92, Nov.

2012           Allison Meier, “Go Sunset Park: An Emerging Art Community.” Hyperallergic.com, Sept.

2010           Taube, Isabel. “The Open Image.” Between Picture and Viewer: The Image in Contemporary Painting SVA Galleries, New York City [exhibition catalog]

2009           Greene, Warren. Jettison: New Ideas in Abstraction [exhibition catalogue]

2008           Regina Hackett, “Never Fear, Painting is Here.” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, January 17

                  Gayle Clemans, “Falling in Love with Intimacy of Painting.” The Seattle Times, February 19

                  Patricia Courson, “Tiffany Calvert: New Work.” Flavorpill.net, March 14

                  Dan Gunn, “Recommended: Some Abstraction Occurs.” Newcity.com, January 17

                  Patricia Courson, “Some Abstraction Occurs.” Flavorpill.net, January 11

2006           Fred Camper, “Two-Dimensional Dioramas.” The Chicago Reader, March 24: Section 2, 24

                  Mary Birmingham, “Garage Art Work is Raw, Real with Mixed Identities.” The Jersey Journal, October 27: 23

2005           Mid-Atlantic Region cover artist. New American Paintings. Boston: The Open Studios Press

2002           Alan Artner. “Paintings Are Disarming, Memorable.” Chicago Tribune, August 9: sec. 7

 

COLLECTIONS

21C Hotel + Museum, Louisville KY

Art Omi Collection, Omi NY

Fidelity Investments Corporate Collection

Hudson County Community College Foundation, Jersey City NJ

Speed Museum, Louisville KY

Omni Hotel, Louisville KY